


Two-Piece

by flightlessnerds



Series: Regional at Best: The Web Series [1]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Early Days, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Regional At Best Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightlessnerds/pseuds/flightlessnerds
Summary: “Tyler,” he said, so softly, leaning forward to grip the arm of his chair. “I hope you’re not dumb enough to think I’m going to give up on this.”





	Two-Piece

**Author's Note:**

> just a little one <3 i missed writing this era.

Tyler was used to the camera on him, but it was clear that Josh was self conscious with Mark breathing down his neck. 

This dynamic, their friendship, wasn’t new - the three of them had been close for months now. But this part of it, the part that had found Josh in the studio with them, finally an integral piece of making this music come to life, still felt like a dream - and Tyler was still waiting to wake up. 

He wasn’t sure he’d been properly awake since Nick had quit. Nothing since that moment had quite felt real. All they could do was move forward, as two, knowing that everything had changed.

“What do you think of that?” Tyler asked, casual front masking the deep current of insecurity that ran underneath. 

“It feels pretty good,” Josh offered. 

From anyone else, it would feel unenthusiastic, would set Tyler spinning in a paralyzing gyre of doubt and inadequacy - but with Josh, there were no guessing games, no hidden agendas. If he said it felt good, he meant it. Tyler was grateful. 

There was nothing unfamiliar about this bass track - he’d programmed _Ode to Sleep_ himself in the first place - but nevertheless, it was taking on a new quality for Tyler in the cloying quiet of the basement studio. He hated to admit it, but it felt like an echo of the bassist who’d left them, like Nick was still hovering in the room, making them all the more aware of his unexpected absence. 

Somehow, Tyler didn’t mind Josh’s offhand response. With the album almost done, the tracks already programmed, Josh’s role had become one of moral support, back-up vocals in the empty spaces where there was room for him to lend his voice. Tyler was fitting him in wherever he could - but where he needed him, really, was here - reassuring him that these bass lines would be enough, that they would be enough of a show, just two of them.

“All this basically means,” Tyler began, suddenly overly-aware of Mark’s camera, “is that twenty one pilots is gonna be a two-piece band.” 

He shot a glance at Josh, inconspicuous for the sake of the recording. Soft, scruffy, and unreadable, Josh stared back.

“And we’re gonna rely pretty heavily on technology,” he paused, “and _energy_ onstage, to cover up the fact that we’re only two people. But I think we can do it. It’s just…” 

Josh met his eyes this time, patient, letting him do the talking. 

“It’s a lot of work. I just uh, I just wonder if we can put on enough of a show. With two people.” 

He swallowed. Mark flipped the camera closed. 

“You guys need food,” Mark decided, and he was up the stairs and gone before Tyler could even get his mouth open to mention that he wasn’t hungry. 

Josh’s eyes were on him, had never left, maybe. 

It hurt. His eyes on Tyler hurt. 

“Fresh air,” Tyler mumbled, and Josh nodded, startled, and let him go. 

The backyard of the rental house was small, unkempt, but it served them well. Tyler sat down at one of the paint-chipped metal chairs that stood sentinel around a metal-frame table, and braced his feet up on the glass top. 

All Tyler could do was try to breathe, try to hold on to some fading image of the future. He had no idea where he was going. He barely knew where he was. 

He didn’t notice the back door open and close until Josh was in the chair next to him, and he could _feel_ those eyes again, on him, both covering him and stripping him bare. 

Tyler opened his mouth, but his voice fell short, excuses choked in the back of his throat about betrayal and disloyalty, how this wasn’t the same as last time, how money had forced Chris away, whereas Nick’s departure had felt - still felt - like a blow to Tyler’s dignity, effectively sending the message that he didn’t think Tyler’s music was worth his faith and commitment. 

“It’s not,” Tyler began, voice lost in the back of his mouth, “it won’t be -” 

“I know,” Josh cut him off simply, frowning, almost - but brown eyes soft as ever. 

Something seemed to register on Josh’s face.

“Tyler,” he said, so softly, leaning forward to grip the arm of his chair. “I hope you’re not dumb enough to think I’m going to give up on this.” 

Tyler snapped up his head, daring to meet Josh’s eyes, and finding them warm and gold and full of the kind of sincerity that lived in every one of Josh’s interactions, but that grew stronger in private, in moments like these. 

“I joined this for the long haul,” he went on, laughter making its way into his voice, as if he couldn’t believe Tyler would ever doubt this incontrovertible truth. “You get that I’ve been waiting for this, right? This is, you know, the kind of life I’ve wanted for _forever_ now. We’re in this together. It’s a career, you know? Not some gig. I swear.” 

He paused to readjust his grip on Tyler’s chair, and Tyler let himself sit there dumb, lip between his teeth. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Josh talk quite this long about something this serious, maybe not since that first night they’d spent time together, that fumbling awestruck night a year ago when they’d stayed up til morning, bubbling over with the miracle of their mutual dreams. 

“I’m not going anywhere, like -” Josh shrugged. “I have nowhere else to go. And that’s not supposed to sound pathetic,” he rushed. “I just mean - this is enough. It’ll be hard, but yeah - we’re enough. I really think we are.”

Something thick and immense settled in Tyler’s chest, and he let it himself sink into the feeling, reveling in the significance of what Josh was saying, at the fact that Josh could just _come out with_ these kinds of sweeping declarations like it was nothing, like it was the simplest and most obvious thing in the world. 

Josh may not have been known for his poetry, his sense of metaphor - but, Tyler was beginning to realize, the beauty of his sentiments lay not in his words, like Tyler’s did, but in the earth-shattering simplicity of his willingness to give himself over fully to something as simple as drumming, or friendship, or _love._

The fact that Josh would so readily make that kind of proclamation of loyalty mere weeks after joining the band was enough to force the realization to the front of Tyler’s consciousness: Josh had been there all along. 

He had been there, faithful, fierce, and kind, for so much longer than Tyler had given him credit for. This wasn’t new. Josh had been there the whole time, in the crowd, backstage, waiting for Tyler to _let him_ \- and it suddenly felt _absurd_ that Tyler had ever wondered about his commitment, that he’d ever even imagined that Josh would leave like the others. They really, truly were twenty one pilots - both of them, and Mark, and Michael. It wasn’t just two of them, it was four, and ten, and a hundred, their parents, their siblings, every incidental listener and every venue crew, the whole city of Columbus and the whole state of Ohio, and every kid who’d ever discovered pieces of their souls in their music. 

The enormity of it all overtook Tyler utterly, stripped him of any control over his body; Josh was looking at him still, patient, like he had been for so long. 

Tyler wanted to speak, wished he could speak, but found that he was entirely at the whim of this weightless breathless feeling of hope and impossibility. 

He did the only thing left to do. 

One hand on Josh’s thigh and one gripping his chair, with the entirety of their dreams, past and future, hovering in the air - Tyler kissed him. 

Josh responded with a year’s worth of enthusiasm. 

And yet, as always, he managed to be gentle, bringing a hand up to curl at the back of Tyler’s hair, pulling his mouth closer, to kiss him, and _kiss_ him, pressing trust into his lips. 

It winded him so thoroughly that Tyler had to break away to catch his breath. He allowed himself a single moment to worry, bracing for the impact of Josh’s reaction - and yet Josh was all smiles, grinning himself stupid, like he’d been waiting his whole life for Tyler’s lips to arrive on his, and like he had no doubt that they eventually would. 

It felt like the last piece of some simple, cosmic puzzle had finally been put in place. The band hadn’t lost anything at all, Tyler realized. They’d gained _everything._ This was exactly the configuration they had always been moving towards, but which couldn’t exist until the rest of it had fallen away, leaving the bare bones of what twenty one pilots was always meant to be. 

Tyler and Josh, together. 

“I’m here,” Josh told him. 

He was breathless, smiling. 

“I believe you. 

Tyler let himself imagine an infinity in the space behind Josh’s lips. 

They were so much more than just two.

**Author's Note:**

> i really don’t know how this happened? i was working on my dema fic and then i had to leave to go to work, and slowtown came on in the car and this entire fic idea just Hit Me and i started dictating a note on my phone and wrote it as soon as i could? you’d think i’d be tired of writing soft RAB-era kisses at this point but evidently Not. 
> 
> find me on tumblr @vialism


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